The invention relates to a compartmented distribution line. In automatic mail distribution systems, a compartmented distribution line serves, for example, to roughly distribute according to postal guide code regions letters arriving successively on a conveyor belt and therefore, as shown in FIG. 1, such a line is composed of a plurality of stacking compartments assigned separately to these regions and arranged one behind the other.
By means of a compartmented path equipped with switches, the pieces of mail are associated with the individual stacking compartments and stacked therein. At the input of this compartmented path, there is a measuring path on which it is determined whether the respective piece of mail is "too long" or the gap between successive pieces of mail is too small. The gap must not be below a certain value since otherwise the switch does not have sufficient time to open or close during the gap.
Mail that cannot be processed or has too small a gap between pieces is stacked in a reject compartment.
It is the object of the invention to align, in such a compartmented distribution line, the leading edges of pieces of mail to be stacked as accurately as possible with one another, to avoid their being folded over and not to stack them with bent-over corners because otherwise this could produce malfunctions during stacking in the respective stack compartment because the stacking triangle would be closed more and more.
This state occurs primarily if pieces of mail which are not very stiff or unstable and bulk mailings are stacked.
When stacking occurs with a minimal gap between pieces of mail, the trailing edge of the preceding piece has not yet left the insertion region so that the next following piece runs onto the trailing edge. The result is that a malfunction (clogging) occurs and the system stops. This means unnecessary down time of the system which is equivalent to less output or reduction in throughput.
It is thus significant for the invention that its use avoids the above-mentioned various causes of possible malfunctions and poor stack quality.